NEW YORK (CNN) -- Minutes after he reported hitting birds and losing power in both engines, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 calmly told an air traffic controller the plane would ditch into the Hudson River.

"We can't do it," pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger said at 3:29 p.m. on January 15, in response to efforts to land the plane at New Jersey's Teterboro airport, according to a recording released Thursday by the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We're gonna be in the Hudson," Sullenberger said, about three and a half minutes after the Airbus A320 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport.

The plane's flight data recorder "revealed no anomalies or malfunctions in either engine up to the point where the captain reported a bird strike, after which there was an uncommanded loss of thrust in both engines," the NTSB said.